Veneer-cutting machine.



PATENTED JAN. 2, 1906.

J. J. RUSSELL. VENEER CUTTING MACHINE.

APPLICATION FILED MAR-28, 1904.

- nnnnnnn' I 1 1 UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

VENEER-CUTTING MACHINE.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Patented Jan. 2, 1906.

Application filed March 28,1904. Serial No. 200,405.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, JAMEs J. RUSSELL, of Milwaukee, in the county ofMilwaukee and State of Wisconsin, have invented certain new and usefulImprovements in Veneer- Cutting Machines and I hereby declare that thefollowing is a full, clear, and exact description thereof, referencebeing had to the accompanying drawings, which form part of thisspecification.

The present invention is an improvement in machines for cutting veneerstaves for barrels and like wooden vessels. Its object is to produceveneer staves from hard wood and fine-grained soft wood with roughenedsurfaces at the points where the hoops engage them, so that the hoopswill hold securely without slipping, thus enabling hard woods to be usedin the manufacture of barrels.

It is impractical at the present time to use hard woods or Southern gumwood successfully for veneer staves, because the surface of the veneeris sleek and smooth and being so the hoops cannot grip the stavessufficiently to maintain a tight hold thereon. This difficulty does notarise with soft woods, ex cept Southern gum, which is very sleek, norwith sawed woods; but soft woods suitable for cheap barrel making arealmost entirely exhausted, except gum, and the loss of wood caused bythe saw-kerfs and the extra cost of sawing renders sawed-stave barrelstoo costly.

While the invention is particularly designed for use in hard and gumwoods, as stated, it can of course be used on soft-wood staves also, ifdesired, and I do not limit myself to any particular wood.

By my invention I am enabled to produce perfectly satisfactory barrelsfrom hardwood veneer and veneer made from gum wood by roughening theouter surface of the staves transversely at the points where the hoopswill come, leaving the other part smooth, thus producing a moresatisfactory barrel.

A further feature of the invention is to roughen the stave material atthe desired points prior to its being cut from the veneer strips andsimultaneously with the production of the veneer sheets, as will behereinafter explained, so that no time is wasted in roughening thestaves, no extra machinery is required for so doing, and I score orroughen the veneer sheet longitudinally at the desired'points as thesheet is cut from the log and afterward out such sheet transversely intostaves, the resultant staves being roughened transversely at the endsand quarters 1where the hoops come and the width of the Iff carrying outmy invention I attach to an ordinary veneercutting machine, andpreferably to the presser-bar thereof in advance of the cutting-knife, aset of roughing or scoring tools for the end-hoop scores and for thequarter-hoop scores, such tools being adapted to scratch and roughen theouter surface of the log or stock, so that the resultant veneer sheet isscratched or roughened at the desired points.

I am aware that cutting-tools have been used in veneer-machines todivide the veneer sheet into longitudinal strips, also that tools havebeen attached to veneer-machines to croze and chamfer the edges of theveneer for staves. I am also aware that indenting or scoring tools havebeen attached to veneermachines for the purpose of scoring the veneer,so that it can afterward be easily bent at the scores into desiredforms. None of these devices, however, operate as or accomplish thepurposes of my invention, as I do not cut the stave nor indent it, so asto weaken it, but I simply roughen its surface, producing a decidedlyuseful and novel result and making it practically feasible tomanufacture veneer-stave barrels out of hard and slippery woods.

In the accompanying drawings I have illustrated the means and mode ofmanufacturing these improved veneer staves and will now proceed todescribe the same in detail.

Figure 1 is a detail sectional elevation of parts of one of theroughing-tools, a veneer-cutting machine equipped with my improvement.Fig. 2 is a reduced plan view of Fig. 1. Fig. 3 is a detail plan of aveneer sheet produced by such machine, and Fig. 4 is a view of a stavecut from such sheet. Figs. 5 and 6 are detail bottom and end views.

' Any suitable make of veneer-machine may be used in which sections ofwood logs A are mounted on axial supports and rotated against a cutteror knife B, which slices athin sheet or layer V therefrom. Thesemachines are usually provided with a presser-bar C adj acent to theknife, against which bar the log is ressed and held firmly while beingcut. I have simply indicated the ordinary relative positions of the log,knife, and Presser-bar of such machines in the drawings, as theparticular construction thereof or of the veneermachine as a whole formsno part of the present invention.

At suitable points adjacent to the knife I locate the roughing orscratching tools D, four being ordinarily used by me, located at suchdistances apart that they will roughen the surface of the veneer at thefour points Where the hoops will come when the strip is cut into staves.Preferably these tools are constructed as in Figs. 5 and 6 and consistof a steel plate having its lower face longitudinally grooved withparallel V-grooves, as at d, and the inner end of the tool is beveled,as at d, at right angles to grooves (i, so that the intersecting bevelsand grooves form a series of triangular teeth (Z which scratch thesurface of the log and the veneer cut therefrom. These tools must beheld in contact with the log with their'bevel ends (1 inclining in thedirection of rotation of the log, so that the points d do not plow intoor shave the surface of the log, as I do not wish to cut materialtherefrom, but merely to roughen its surface.

Preferably the tools D are attached to the presserbar C and may besupported in grooves 11 in the under side thereof, as indicated in Figs.1 and 2, and may be adjusted inwardly by tap-bolts D. When properly setand adjusted, these tools will roughen the surface of the veneer alongfour parallel lines, as indicated at 1) in the drawings. The roughenedveneer strips may be cut into staves b and jointed by the machine shownin patent to Kerr, No. 524,982, of August 21, 1894, and the resultantstaves cut from the veneer will be roughened at the ends and quarters,as indicated in Fig. 4, against which portions the hoops come when thestaves are assembled into barrels, and the inner surfaces of the hoopswill embed themselves in the indentations in the rough surfaces of thestaves and be held securely in place.

- By this means and method I can produce from hard wood veneer staveswhich will be as easily and as securely fastened by the ordinary hoopsas the softer sawed staves can be and are of greater durability, owingto the greater strength of the hard woods.

Having thus described my invention, what I therefore claim as new, anddesire to secure by Letters Patent thereon, is

1. In combination with the knife and presser-bar of a veneer-cuttingmachine, said presser-bar having a series of transverselyarranged slotsin its under side, of a set of roughing-tools in said slots, each toolhaving longitudinal grooves on its under side and beveled at rightangles to said grooves on its inner end, whereby a series of roughing orscoring points are formed on the inner end of said tool, said toolsbeing arranged to score or roughen the veneer sheet as it is cut fromthe log, substantially as described.

2. In a stave-veneer-cutting machine the combination of the presser-barhaving a series of transverse slots in its under side, a set ofadjustable roughing-tools slidably fitted in said slots, and boltstapped through the outer edge of the presser-bar for adjusting saidroughing-tools toward the inner edge of the bar; with a cutting-knifearranged below the cutterbar, with its cutting edge approximatelyopposite the working edges of the cutting-tools, substantially asdescribed.

In testimony that I claim the foregoing as my own I aflix my signaturein presence of two witnesses.

JAMES J. RUSSELL. In presence of O. T. MoELnoY, C. T. REYNOLDS.

